


conditioned response

by pensee



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bad drug reactions, Blood Loss, Blood and Gore, Bodily Functions, Cannibalism, Cruelty, Dehumanization, Digit Amputation, FERAL HANNIBAL, Hannibal eats Will's neighbor raw, Hannibal's choice of reckoning, Incontinence, Lack of personal hygiene, M/M, Magical Realism, Nonverbal Hannibal, Oral Sex, Oral sex with pissplay, Season 2 AU, Sexual contact with someone who has not bathed, Stabbing, Starvation, Time Skips, Violence, Will chains Hannibal in his yard, Will gets pissed on, Will's choice of reckoning, drugged Hannibal, mentions of self-mutilation, pissplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:09:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22752298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensee/pseuds/pensee
Summary: Hannibal had wanted to act like a dog pissing on his territory, playing with Will’s life and mental well-being like it was a chew toy that he could slobber all over and puncture and shred into a million pieces just because he felt like he could. Well, Will thought, if Hannibal was going to act like a dog, Will was sure as hell going to treat him like one. He hadn’t met a feral hound yet that he couldn’t train.-Will gets his reckoning.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 11
Kudos: 57





	conditioned response

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has a potential for MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH and has an AMBIGIOUS ENDING. If you ask in the comments, I will explain justification for both main characters surviving, and one of them dying, whichever ending you prefer. Hannibal and Will are both cruel to each other in this fic. Just please keep that in mind before you read. 
> 
> Will’s fantasy of Hannibal tied to a tree in Shiizakana hinted at how self-satisfied Hannibal would be to see that he had driven Will to such extreme cruelty, so I imagine that even in his limited mental capacity in this fic, he would be proud that Will had done this to him, but you could imagine it whatever way you choose. 
> 
> Imo, the fic isn’t actually as terrible as the extensive tags suggest, but please be careful as you’re reading and turn back at any point if you need to.

Hannibal Lecter goes missing on a Tuesday night.

The last person to see him alive is Bernard Tubbs, a grocery clerk at Franz’s Local Organics, and he tells the police that Doctor Lecter looked absolutely normal the last time he saw him, perhaps a bit tired.

 _Was this unusual_? the police ask Tubbs, and receive a noncommittal shrug in return.

 _I dunno_ , Tubbs replies _._ _I just bag the guy’s groceries every week_.

There is hardly anyone to mourn the loss, and despite Jack Crawford’s certain fondness for people that are useful to him, as well as the FBI’s and Baltimore PD’s resources at his disposal, the case quickly goes cold.

Will had thought a lot about what he would do the first day he walked free of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Shooting his therapist in the face had been high on the list, but he couldn’t find it in himself to pull the trigger, so at the last minute, he changes his mind and withdraws a syringe from his jacket, jamming it into the side of Hannibal’s neck.

He’s almost disappointed when Hannibal doesn’t fight—almost as if he is still trying to play innocent—but it really just makes Will angrier. He probably thought, when he woke up, if he woke up, that he would be able to find a way to talk himself out of his situation.

Will had fantasized about cutting out Hannibal’s silver tongue, idly, once, while sitting in his cell dreaming of his own flesh being cooked by the electric chair, but the reality of how he finally silences his therapist is entirely too perfect for him to have fully planned out beforehand.

 _No_ , opportunity was the name of the game when it came to Hannibal putting him in prison in the first place, so Will was going to take some opportunities of his own in return.

Hannibal wakes up from sedation half-blind and stumbling over his words, suffering from what Will later gleans is a poor reaction to the drugs he had stolen from the doctor’s own office.

He wonders if the sedatives are the same as the ones Hannibal had used to hypnotize him into losing even more time, but it doesn’t matter, because the second time, he doesn’t even have to use an injection, just a handful of sleeping pills and some warm milk, and Hannibal’s mumbles start to quiet as he clings to Will like a child.

The muttering slowly gets quieter and quieter, and then it stops altogether.

Hannibal has been missing for two weeks, and the FBI has contacted Will only once, to tell them that they were going to have him in for an interview that lasts for only five minutes when he says, point blank, that he would have no reason to harm his therapist now that his physiologically induced mental illness had been cured.

They have no reason to hold him, no reason to do more than suspect he has something to do with the disappearance, so he is released.

Hannibal all but scrambles up to him when he comes through the door, half-walking, half dragging himself across the floor. He almost seems relieved when Will takes out the syringe—only a half-dose this time—and puts it in his arm.

A small bead of blood wells up, and he idly sucks at it as Will packages the used needle.

Hannibal has been missing for two and a half weeks, and Will has only begun to think of all the things he wants to do.

Deciding that Hannibal has no need for clothes—he tends to piss himself whenever Will doesn’t remind him to go to the bathroom, and cleanup is easier without them—Will wakes up in the middle of the night to the sensation of wet skin against his jaw, and realizes that Hannibal has probably urinated all over his pillow, the dogs whining and pacing around them as Hannibal makes a low, keening growl in the back of his throat and tries to hump his half-erect dick against Will’s face.

“This is the fourth fucking time this week, Hannibal,” he scolds, voice thick with sleep, but nonetheless tolerates it as Hannibal’s cockhead slips against his half-open mouth, salivating at the sharp scent of piss in his nostrils, hoping vainly that the extra saliva will help dull the taste.

He hasn’t showered Hannibal in a few days, and the musky smell of his sweat and body odor—so, he was a human being and not a perfect Stepford husband after all—is almost overwhelming, but Will pushes a hand down his boxers and starts jerking himself in the same erratic rhythm of Hannibal using his mouth.

When Hannibal comes, Will spits the whole mess of saliva, piss, and come back onto him and reaches for the light switch. Instinctively groping for a syringe but deciding he doesn’t need it, he straightens himself on wobbly legs and lets the dogs out into the yard, where they mill around for a good five minutes before he changes the sheets and scrubs as best he can at the mattress, Hannibal waiting on the floor in a puddle of come-vomit and watching him work with unblinking eyes.

Grabbing him by the hair, Will whistles for him to stand, and Hannibal reluctantly follows. He senses something is amiss, but doesn’t know how to articulate his discomfiture, instead gnawing at the limb holding him until Will has teeth marks up and down his forearm, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes from the pain.

Hannibal has not brushed his teeth since Will brushed them for him three days ago.

 _Make sure you don’t get gangrene_ , Will reminds himself, staring briefly at the wounds on his arm before finally releasing Hannibal near the door of the barn.

He knows Hannibal will hear the jingle of chains, and wants him to feel that primal fright associated with being trapped with nowhere to go. Taking a flashlight off a half-rotted chest of drawers, Will uses the weak beam to find the bulky padlocks he’d furtively chosen days ago in a hardware store with a blush going up to his ears, more out of fear of discovery than arousal. Though his cock is stirring again now, straining at his shorts.

There have been many criminals damned for kidnapping and worse due to security cameras at various shopping destinations, damned by tell-tale purchases on receipts that were part of store records, but he doesn’t think of any of that now, too concerned with the flavor of a true reckoning so close he can taste it.

Taking the heavy chain that had been used to hold the previous tenant’s big hunting dogs, he uses the flashlight to find the weathered hook in the backyard, whistling again for Hannibal to come. Clipping one end of the chain with one lock, he settles the heavy links over Hannibal’s neck and secures the other end with the second.

“Try not to choke or chafe yourself to death before morning,” he says, adding, “If you want to stay inside, you need to learn not to piss yourself, okay?”

Beneath long, unkempt whiskers, Hannibal’s lip curls briefly, but he has learned, at least, not to fight so much.

“Good,” Will says, yawning and grumbling to himself at the cleanup work left for him in the house.

Ever since he’d known him, Hannibal had wanted to act like a dog pissing on his territory, playing with Will’s mental health and well-being like it was a chew toy he could slobber all over and puncture and shred into a million pieces just because he felt like he could. _Well_ , Will thought, if Hannibal was going to act like a dog, Will was sure as hell going to treat him like one. He hadn’t met a feral hound yet that he couldn’t train.

It’d take time, but eventually, he’d have Hannibal literally eating out of his hand.

“Thanks again, Rhys,” Will smiles, chuckling lowly at the blush it elicits on his new neighbor’s pale skin.

Maybe, if he’d any time for it, he would want to spend time with someone comparatively normal and comparatively boring who wasn’t the man that had ruined his life, but in saddling himself with a quest for revenge, he’d also saddled himself with an almost suffocating need to attend to Hannibal the best he could. Prolonged torture wouldn’t have any point if his therapist wasn’t alive or cognizant enough to enjoy it.

He also couldn’t let Jack get suspicious—he’d already taken three sick days this month—about where he was disappearing to whenever he had to skip class for an unclassified “family emergency”, although it went unspoken that everyone at work knew he had no family.

So, Rhys was something pretty to smile at and someone useful to watch his dogs when he was away on cases, but that was all it would ever have to be.

(Rhys was the polite sort who didn’t go poking around locked doors, so he would hopefully never find Hannibal, near comatose and restrained in the attic. So far, Will had had no complaints.)

“Be careful with Winston. Always take him out on a leash. If not, he tries to run to, you know, wherever he can get to,” he warns, but Rhys had been reliable in the past; he probably won’t have to worry.

“Have fun catching those bad guys, Will,” Rhys says, flippant as if Will were going out for a gallon of milk. A sudden disgust roils through Will at that moment, and he irrationally misses the depth of conversation, the due reverence on the subject, that he’d stolen from himself in choosing to create of his only worthy conversational partner this strange, mangy, half-human thing that paced and crawled around his yard like a kicked dog.

“Always do,” Will says, lips pulled into a shallow frown.

Almost as soon as he’s returned from one case, he gets word of another. He’s grateful that he’d had the wherewithal to pay a friend from the shelter to dog-sit them elsewhere over the long weekend, so he doesn’t need to worry about calling Rhys to check up on them again.

Hannibal stares forlornly out the attic window when Will comes to unbind him, Jack’s new message insultingly blunt on his phone screen.

 _Need you again_.

He doesn’t have time to see or respond to another missed text from his neighbor, an offer of a weekend dinner, his treat.

He does, however, have time to grab something for Hannibal to eat from the refrigerator, and to fill an empty milk jug with water from the tap.

Leniency wasn’t a gift Hannibal ever gave him, but he feels lenient nonetheless, letting Hannibal out to the yard for a few minutes of unencumbered fresh air before he chains him up again, leaves the food at his feet and slides another syringe into his arm.

While Rhys had come out to check up on him before—make small talk as an excuse for seeing him—his own farm is about a mile away, and he’s never dropped by unannounced, so Will shouldn’t have to worry about any unexpected visitors discovering Hannibal all chained up while he’s away.

“I’m on my way,” he says, Jack answering the phone with a weary, “Yeah, we caught another one an hour ago.”

Everything should work itself out; he’ll pore over a few files, maybe take an overnight trip. He’ll be back before Hannibal even notices the hours that have passed.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Crawford,” the local police chief tells Jack, for the fiftieth time today. Will was supposed to have been back on a plane home this afternoon, but Jack had cajoled him into extending his stay, and everyone in the room has been up for over thirty hours.

Their killer was still at large, and Will was too distracted at the thought of whether the food he had left in the yard—a cooked rotisserie chicken and a gallon of water—would be enough to stop Hannibal from gnawing his own arm off trying to get more when his rations inevitably ran out.

“I need full cooperation from every agency if we’re going to coordinate—,” Jack starts, but the chief cuts him off.

“You’ve got cooperation, from us, from the state police. Face it, Crawford, your golden goose just isn’t poppin’ out those perfectly shiny eggs anymore. Look at ‘im, he’s about to keel over. Yuta, Maeve, Goddamn, _somebody_ get Graham another coffee, would you?”

“I don’t feel well,” Will says, and he does feel nauseous now, thinking of picked clean chicken bones and mistakes he’s made, the sickest, most depraved parts of him thinking, _I shouldn’t have left him, what if he dies when I’m not there, what if something happens and_ I’m _not the one to do it to him_? “I’m gonna catch the next flight out, Jack, I’m sorry.”

Crawford’s expression is grim, but he waves Will off as if he’s a minor annoyance and not the whole fulcrum on which his investigation rests.

“Get some rest. You’re not going home. See a doctor if it’s really that bad,” he orders, and Will scoffs to himself, _That’s exactly what I intend to do_.

He manages to sneak onto an early-morning flight without too much fuss, while Jack still thinks he’s back at the motel convalescing.

Mechanically retrieving his car from the airport parking structure and beginning his long drive home, he uses the time to consider the hot water he’s just catapulted himself into. There’s something else, too, nagging at his mind, an unanswered text from his neighbor, about a dinner whose arranged time had long come and gone. He’ll have to call Rhys and apologize for being absent later, but that’s not his most pressing concern right now.

Until he pulls into the driveway, everything seems as if it’s almost barely falling apart, like he can hold it together by just wishing hard enough. He’ll catch hell from Jack, and have even worse of a time explaining why he left in the middle of a case; he can handle it all, as long as Hannibal’s ali—.

Squinting, he makes out something fallen at the corner of the house— _paper bags, takeout containers_ —and jogs closer, smelling blood as he rounds the porch, accompanied by the methanogenic scent of decomposition and the unmistakable smell of shit.

The backyard is a mess of carnage, skin and… _parts_ …of what Will supposes used to be his neighbor Rhys, recognizing the familiar clothes and about half of a death-slack face, the rest of it chewed to something that resembles raw, ground hamburger. Scattered all over the grass like a muddy-brown Pollock painting, chunks of tissue peek out, gory Easter eggs for the taking.

The rotisserie chicken he left behind has been demolished, as well as a portion of Rhys’s arm, Hannibal tearing a hearty piece of meat off of his neighbor’s ulna, bone still gleaming with a pinkish sheen of blood.

He growls as Will approaches his obviously hard-won meal, Will taking in the sight of him, neck red and chafed to bleeding from the heavy chain, teeth stained entirely dark as if he’s swallowed charcoal, the chunk of mangled flesh on his own arm as if he’d gnawed at it like an injured animal trying to get away.

Coagulated mess drips from his beard and onto the grime-smeared hair on his chest, and Will notices, with an audible swallow, that his cock is starting to rise.

Eyes unusually bright behind his lank hair, Hannibal looks at him with the first real recognition he’s displayed since Will had brought him here, and Will thinks, not without a bit of fear, _Shit_.

Rhys’s corpse had fouled itself in its last moments, and Will chokes a bit on the smell as he says, “Hannibal. Drop the body. You’ve had your fill. Let him go.”

Hannibal spits bloody foam at him and takes another defiant bite of Rhys’s shredded limb.

Will’s hand slips into his pocket, fingering the master key to the padlocks holding Hannibal captive, and steps forward. There is an already-prepared syringe inside, but should he leave Hannibal to his own devices for the few moments it will take to fetch it?

“Give,” he says, with a whistle, and Hannibal tenses for a second before biting down again, ignoring him.

“ _Hannibal_ ,” he growls, voice sterner, and he’s proud of how little it shakes.

 _No, never again, you’ll never make me feel that weak again_.

Baring his teeth, stance as large and intimidating as the chain allows him to be, Hannibal snaps at him like a rabid animal, eyes slightly manic as Will stands his ground. He couldn’t back down, couldn’t turn tail to get the syringe now; it would only invite more trouble than it was worth.

Hannibal’s a coiled spring waiting to be released, but Will takes a chance and surges forward, uses Hannibal’s semi-crouched position as an advantage and gets a hand along the back of his neck, physically attempting to bring him to heel. Snarling but seemingly sated for now on the meat in his mouth, Hannibal lets out a low groan and slumps a bit, Will watching him sag and dig into Rhys with renewed gusto.

He hasn’t adhered to the command exactly, but at least he’s not puffing up again like he’s about to lunge.

“You’re a mess,” he grimaces, somehow having gotten blood and grime on his own hands and clothes despite not really touching much.

Staring at the smear of dark red on his palms, he knows he should probably unchain Hannibal, spray him off with the hose, dose him again, and walk him inside to the tub to bathe. Eyelids heavy with exhaustion no matter how heavy his heart is pounding, it’s no wonder that Will does not see the first blow coming.

Will instinctively clutches at himself, blood spilling over his clamped fingers as a shattered piece of bone pierces his side. A ragged moan leaves his lips, though he cuts it off prematurely, mind racing at how to stop the onslaught as Hannibal rips his improvised blade free and jams it into another part of him, hands too slippery to get any purchase, even as he vainly reaches to gouge at Hannibal’s eyes.

The other man may be half-starved, but he is motivated, the wet squelch of bone sinking into flesh only spurring him on further as he moves faster than Will’s now-sluggish body can keep up with, system trying to cope with blood loss and a crippling sense that he was not, however much he tried, going to make it out of this alive.

Flailing blindly, he manages to get purchase on the soft flesh of Hannibal’s face, though his right ring finger is caught in Hannibal’s teeth. He screams when Hannibal bites down, a sharper counterpoint to the pulpy mass of his guts as he continues to lose count of how many times he has been stabbed.

“N- _no_ ,” he chokes out, locking eyes with Hannibal and knowing that he’s about to lose a finger, hyperventilating as he registers the gurgling sound that issues from his mouth as Hannibal inexplicably separates the digit from his body with nothing save his bare teeth.

Dragging him close by the now-filthy lapels of his jacket, Hannibal sniffs at him like a lion scenting its prey, and Will thinks he’s about to get his face bitten off like Rhys had, vision swimming from lack of blood, legs weakening though his body scrabbles for life, batting at whatever parts of Hannibal’s body he can reach.

Hannibal’s expression is stony behind his tangled hair and mangy beard.

Instead of closing the distance between them—and they are close enough to kiss, Will thinks, with a dreamy sort of incomprehension that makes him thrash harder in Hannibal’s hold—Hannibal snuffles at him once more, then smirks, his blood-darkened teeth on display.

His breath is awful, and Will recoils, but all Hannibal does is slip a disgusting hand into his pocket, retrieving the key that had somehow not been dislodged during their struggle. Having achieved his goal, Hannibal lets go, gravity doing the rest of the work to ensure that Will hits the ground hard, breath knocked out of him as blood trickles from the corner of his mouth.

Will knows, as he stares up at Hannibal, gore-smeared and fearsome, exactly two things. One, that he is dying, and two, that there may be some way Hannibal will be able to save him. Put pressure on the worst of his wounds to slow his death, at least, as Hannibal had done with Abigail.

But instead of the same veneer of pity he had shown in the Hobbs’ kitchen, there is nothing but amused pleasure in his eyes as he watches Will for another few seconds, then unerringly fits the key into each lock, spine giving a satisfying pop as he straightens, heavy chain around his neck falling into the trampled weeds.

At the sight of Will coughing up mouthfuls of crimson at his feet, he smiles again, and Will can’t help but feel the familiar prickle of tears at the corners of his eyes as he feebly writhes, Hannibal standing above him, holding his still-hard cock in his hand and aiming a stream of urine at his face.

Most of it trickles into his mouth, some splashes up his nose, and Will frantically thinks, _God help me, I’m going to die with my therapist’s piss in my lungs_. The urine is so concentrated it’s almost brown, and it stinks to high Heaven, but his one mercy is that Hannibal is dehydrated enough the whole ordeal doesn’t last any more than a few seconds.

 _Marking his territory_ , Will thinks as he coughs, bringing up more and more blood.

His cell phone is in his pocket. There’s a landline in the house. Hannibal doesn’t even need to treat him himself, all he has to do is—.

The scenarios bubble up like a freshly tapped spring, and he can’t stop them. Hannibal helping him, Hannibal leaving him like this, Hannibal harvesting some part of him and feeding his body to his dogs.

Head tilted slightly to the side, Hannibal suddenly regains his composure, as if they are sitting across from one another in his office all over again, and this, for some reason, is the one detail about this whole fucked up shitshow that makes Will start to bawl in earnest.

 _Save me_ , he wants to beg. _Kill me, you coward. Finish the job_ , is what comes out.

Clasping the padlock key in his dirty left hand, Hannibal crouches down to brush his fingers through Will’s sweaty curls, almost like a benediction, though all Will feels is one last curse, practically spitting on him with how pleased he is at the state of things.

Taking one last look at Will’s blood and piss-soaked face, Hannibal smiles briefly, rises, and begins to walk.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up on Twitter @penseeart if this fic stirred the darkfic kinkiness in you.


End file.
